


Nom de Coeur

by Dorinda



Category: Casablanca
Genre: M/M, Travel, World War II, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2004
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-25
Updated: 2004-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-21 19:56:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dorinda/pseuds/Dorinda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship--but beginnings are only seeds, and it's a long way to Brazzaville.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nom de Coeur

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Widget](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Widget).



_Rick: And remember, this gun's pointed right at your heart._  
 _Louis: That is my least vulnerable spot._

That damn searchlight. Rick had gotten used to it sweeping across the café all night, every night, dazzling him whenever he put his head out the door. It was just one of those things that reminded you you were in Casablanca. A random occasional stab in the eyes added spice to your evening. But right now he was a little more wound up than usual--and no wonder. So as he approached the back stairs that led from the street up to his rooms, he kept pausing to let the splash of light coast by. He definitely wasn't going to miss the damn searchlight when he left.

He climbed the stairs between passes of the light, brushing one hand along the railing with something embarrassingly close to reverence. She'd been the last person to use these stairs. The railing was damp with fog and evening condensation, but under the clammy surface he thought he could still feel the warmth of her touch. Ridiculous, yeah, of course. But he felt it anyway.

The same stew of imagination and memory still followed him as he stepped into his dark sitting room. At the end of every inward breath, he could swear he caught just a hint of her perfume, faint and maddeningly out of reach. The back of his neck prickled, and he felt that if he looked back over his shoulder, he'd see her there in the doorway, silhouetted against a blur of foggy moonlight, his own personal ghost.

If there was another way to lose his mind, he'd prefer it.

He only turned on one small lamp in the bedroom, preferring the half-light. Pulling his suitcase up from under the bed, he dug into the bureau, head down, forcefully ignoring the sound of her voice, choked with tears; the feel of her in his arms, fitting soft and strong against his body as if she'd always been there, as if everything else had just been a bad dream. This room was never going to be his own again. Good thing he was leaving.

"Boss?"

He turned, one hand automatically digging into his trenchcoat pocket for the gun before he could stop himself. There was a shadow in the sitting room doorway, broad and solid and familiar.

"Sam." He let out a long breath and unclenched his hand from around the gun. "I'd ask what you're still doing here, but I don't wanna know." Back to the bureau, blindly throwing things into his case.

"Street's swarming with police," Sam said, taking a step in and closing the door behind him. 

Rick yanked open the second drawer and didn't answer.

"They looking for you?"

"Not as far as they know," Rick said. "You better go on home."

Sam didn't budge. Big surprise. "You're in some kinda trouble."

"Look--it's not a good night to be out. The way they're feeling, the cops'll grab you and work you over just on principle." No answer. "Get out of here, will ya? And stop worrying!"

"Uh huh." Sam's voice dripped with patient disbelief. "Yessir, that's gonna happen." He was silent for a few moments. Then, in a softer tone: "Going somewhere?"

Rick bent over and jammed his arm way back inside the second drawer, knocking down the false panel back there, retrieving various packets and boxes of contraband with his fingertips.

"Where's Miss Ilsa?" Sam's voice sounded doubtful with that one. Doubtful, and kind of suspicious, just not suspicious of the right thing. Rick knew what he was thinking, and it twisted his gut--just a little--to think that he could easily have been right.

"I'm sure you'll be hearing it around town tomorrow." He stretched as far back into the secret compartment as he could, his head nearly shoved all the way inside the bureau, making his voice sound flat and loud in his own ears. "Mr. and Mrs. Laszlo left on the Lisbon plane, on their way to America." There was nothing left back there after all. Fine, then. Third drawer.

There was an uneasy silence from Sam's direction; Rick imagined the tug of war in Sam's head between being glad and being sorry for him. It isn't like before, he wanted to say--this isn't the Paris train station. But instead he just packed. Anyway, he wasn't so sure it mattered, in the end.

"They got them letters," Sam said finally. "Someone made sure they got 'em."

"Maybe," Rick grunted, stooping to the lowest drawer. He couldn't even remember what he kept in there. 

"How'd they get away with all the Nazis on their tail?" Sam always said Nazi with a flat A. Rick liked that. It made them sound like gnats, or like something nasty, both of which he supposed they were. And he didn't mean to answer the question, but he found himself saying it anyway. 

"Seems Major Strasser got himself killed."

"So where we off to now?" Sam said, without missing a beat. He didn't even sound surprised, though it had been years since Rick had had to kill anyone. Of course, Sam had always been good at moving on to the next thing, always looking forward. But it wasn't going to help him this time.

"Go home," Rick said, feeling a little desperate.

"Are you gonna meet me there? Or do we meet up at the station?"

" _Home_ , I said."

"Well, it ain't like you're going someplace without me."

Rick tightened his jaw and didn't answer. He started rummaging through the closet, grabbing things blindly and tossing them into his case.

"Boss. You don't think you're going without me."

Where in hell did he ever get all these _things_? You'd think that a refugee drunkard could have kept his possessions to a minimum, but you'd be wrong.

"Boss?"

"Stop it!" He couldn't take it; he turned on him, clenching his fists. "Listen. I'm not your boss anymore." He got his first good look at Sam's face, and he wished he hadn't.

"Don't worry," he said, speaking more lightly, trying to make that look go away. "Señor Ferrari's upping your percentage." 

Sam studied him. "What, you sell me along with the café?" His voice was soft and steady.

Rick felt that like a blow to the belly. "That's not fair." He slammed the closet door, but it refused to make a good, satisfying noise, being made of bamboo lattice. Dammit.

"Not so fair for you to go sneaking out without me, either."

"I'm not sneaking anywhere. I have to get away quick, that's all." Sam opened his mouth to protest, but Rick overrode him. "And no, you can't come. It's too risky."

"Where you off to?" Sam asked, dubious. "The front lines?"

Rick shrugged and turned away, checking the nightstand drawer for things he was forgetting.

"I've done my share of fighting."

"Cut it out. That was different and you know it." He forced himself to look back at Sam, right in the eye, though it hurt. "This is a serious military garrison. You wouldn't fit in."

Sam stared at him, and to Rick's surprise, he smiled. "Looked outside lately? This is _Africa_. Anybody not fitting in, it's you."

"I'll get by." Rick hoisted his suitcase and brushed past Sam into the sitting room, heading for the back stairs.

"So you're off down to Free French territory," Sam said behind him, casually meaningful.

He froze with his hand on the door. "You're not going to follow me." When Sam didn't answer, he turned around, bristling. "You are not following me, Sam. Understand?"

"Seems to me I don't work for you no more," Sam said blithely. "Seems to me you can't tell me where I go and what I do."

"I'm not kidding around."

Sam calmly spread his hands. "Course you aren't."

"You have to--" Rick stopped, set down his suitcase, and took off his hat, drawing a deep breath. "Sam. What about everybody else?"

"What?"

"Carl. Sascha. Abdul. Hell, Emil and Andrea and the boys in the band. What's going to happen to them?"

Sam's veneer of calmness was fading, leaving confusion in its wake. He shook his head slightly.

Rick seized the opportunity. "They need you here. Who's going to anchor the place without you?"

"They'll do all right," Sam said, his mouth setting in a stubborn line. But he looked uncomfortable.

"Tell me this: why does our place always beat the Blue Parrot?" Rick asked, leaning forward, crushing the dregs of his conscience beneath a heavy heel. "The booze isn't any better here. There aren't any dancing girls. The police chief always hangs around, makes it harder to conduct private business. So how's this place turn a profit that makes fat black marketeers weep into their Turkish coffee?"

Sam shook his head again--looked more like refusal than confusion now, but Rick wasn't going to let up.

"It's you, Sam. Get it? You're the big draw, you and your piano. Ferrari can water down his drinks all he likes, but he's never had you, so he's never had half our business. If you leave, what'll keep the payroll going for Carl and the rest?"

"Don't," Sam managed at last. "Come on. Please. Don't you do this."

Rick stiffened his resolve against the sick, empty feeling churning in his stomach. "You'll keep the place going. Keep it profitable. Make sure everybody gets a good living, stays safe. And you know where the extra money and supplies are stashed, against hard times. Just in case. I didn't tell Ferrari that part."

Sam turned away and leaned heavily on the wall, bowing his head. There was silence for a long time. When he did speak, his voice was muffled with reproach. "Why'd you do that?"

Rick knew he'd won, and he couldn't find a scrap of triumph in it. "I'm sorry."

"You're sorry," Sam sighed, and straightened up like a man shouldering a heavy burden. Which he was, now. But when he turned back around, there was a stern kindness on his face where Rick had half-expected to see despair. "I know. And I bet you did a sorry job of packing, too."

"I packed the same as usual."

"If it's same as usual, that means it's a sorry job." Sam grabbed up the suitcase without ceremony and swung it onto the sofa to open it. He looked up after a few moments. "You got your tuxedo shirt in here," he said, cocking his head. "No shirt studs, no jacket, but you sure enough got the shirt. You expecting some kind of half-formal party?"

"Guess I wasn't really thinking." Rick managed a grin. "There was somebody distracting me."

Sam rolled his eyes and took the suitcase into the bedroom, turning on another lamp. "Just leave it to me for a minute," he called out. "Why don't you go check your office for things you forgot."

Rick obeyed, slipping along the landing to the office, digging through his desk for some papers and a few personal items. He checked the safe and transferred some of the hard cash to one of his extra hiding spaces for Sam to find; no point in tempting Ferrari too seriously. When he got back, Sam was standing in the middle of the room, holding the suitcase in both hands like something valuable. Rick put his hat on and took the case; it was definitely heavier now. He must've forgotten a lot. Trust Sam to catch that. 

"Well." He looked steadily at Sam, and then stretched out his hand. "Thanks."

Sam took his hand and gripped it tight. Rick could feel the texture of calluses on the long, broad fingers. Then they both let go.

Rick cleared his throat and headed for the back door. "Take care of everybody, Sam."

As he was about to close the door behind himself, Sam finally spoke. "Richard."

He turned back. Sam was looking at him piercingly, but there was a ghost of the easy, affectionate old smile just touching the edges of his mouth. "Who's gonna take care of you?"

Rick thought on it. "I guess it'll have to be Captain Renault," he said, and they laughed together one last time. 

At the bottom of the stairs he ducked into the shadows at the base of the building. His hands were cold, his belly ached from the tension, and he didn't want to think about anything. He really needed a cigarette. But he couldn't manage his lighter well, and once he'd lit up and taken a drag, it tasted awful. He picked a shred of tobacco off his lower lip, took a deep breath of foggy air. And as he turned, there was music.

Someone was at the piano inside the café. Three guesses who, and the first two didn't count. The tune was faint from out here, but he knew it: Willow, Weep For Me.

It was time to go.

* * *

He met up with Louis at the spot they'd agreed on, the dark, deserted corner of a road outside of town that led to the station. Louis was sitting neatly atop his own suitcase, watching him approach.

"That took quite a while," he said when Rick was within earshot. "I was beginning to wonder if I had been stood up."

"I like to keep you guessing," Rick replied absently. Then, on a sudden surge of irritation: "Maybe I had to say goodbye to somebody. Isn't there anyone you have to say goodbye to? Someone who won't let you go without it?"

Louis hopped up, lifted his case, and pulled his cap further forward so the visor cast deep shadows over his face. "Certainly not." 

They walked for the station. Rick listened to the rhythm of their footsteps, soft scuffs on the damp ground, refusing to let anything else occupy his thoughts. He did all right with it for a while--until he was actually climbing onto the train. 

For one moment, pausing on the step up, it was 1940 again. Fetid summer, late night, the crowded train grinding and wheezing to a stop at the Casablanca station. He himself, staring through the window at nothing in particular, still numb, Ilsa's wound raw in the pit of his stomach. Next to him, a hand on his elbow--Sam. Talking softly. _Come on, Mr. Richard. Come._ Coaxing him to get to his feet one more time, to climb down into this strange, furtive place; showing him how to stand up and clear his head, to find Henri's contacts and get himself started as someone else. Someone new. 

He followed Louis down the narrow aisle, staggering slightly as the train jolted its way forward, and wondered who he was going to be now.

* * *

Traveling as Captain Renault's lapdog came highly recommended. Louis cut a swathe through crowds of tired, nervous, ordinary travellers with an airy, entitled charm; and while he seemed to have official travel passes for every occasion, Rick seldom saw him actually have to show them to anyone. Conductors led him to first-class accommodations (or what passed for first class in wartime North Africa, which was no pre-war Orient Express, that was for sure), and spit-and-polish Vichy officials met him with bells on at every stop. 

Rick mostly just carried the suitcases. Louis had started automatically leaving his in Rick's care maybe one stop into the trip, ignoring such mundane things as luggage and physical labor. So Rick coasted along in Louis' wake, a bag in each hand, simultaneously benefitting from the automatic invisibility of a pack mule and the leftover effervescence of one Very Important Prefect. 

They were ushered off the train in Oran by a volubly hospitable officer and two of his aides, one of whom even went so far as to sweep the suitcases from Rick's hands, leaving him free to rub his eyes. After a long, fulsome exchange of elaborate compliments and lies, they put their honored guests into the second car of a motorcade of sorts and led the way in a huge, recently-waxed sedan.

Rick looked out the car window until it got boring--which, Oran being Oran, didn't take too long. "Where are we going?"

Louis gave a theatrical little sigh. "If you had bothered to listen to all of the hot air my esteemed colleagues were bathing me with back at the station, you'd know."

"There's a pretty picture." He yawned and leaned his head back against the seat, tipping his hat over his eyes. 

"We have been invited, my dear Ricky, to stay in the private residence of Captain Devereux, to be fed and celebrated as befits my rank."

"Devereux?"

"Oran's new Prefect of Police. Not to mention Mme. Devereux, his utterly delightful wife."

The tone of that last bit made Rick open his eyes and look a sideways warning at Louis. "Easy, now. Don't get husbands with shotguns running after us. We have enough trouble as it is."

"You're not suggesting that I would move in on my brother prefect. In his own home." Louis was sitting primly upright, looking straight ahead, his profile angelic. As angelic as possible, anyway. Butter wouldn't melt--though it would definitely get soft around the edges. 

"I'm suggesting you pull yourself together."

Louis' only answer to that was to smile, carefully adjusting the tilt of his cap and the knot in his tie. Rick closed his eyes on that image. At least somebody was having a good time.

* * *

"Another glass?" she asked, bending down to smile into his eyes, pouring the wine before he had a chance to answer. Vichy or not, Africa or not, these people were still French, and they lived like it. 

Mme. Devereux was pretty, Rick had to admit it. Not aloud to Louis, of course, but he found himself thinking it after the wine had gone around three or four times. Pretty, in a colonial-officer's-wife sort of way, tall and lushly-curved and brown from the eternal sun. Not like the desperate young innocents Louis' men usually brought him, but his taste was much broader than that. Rick knew it, and Louis knew full well he did; his mischievous glances down the table at Rick in between low-voiced conversations with Madame proved he was getting a good night's entertainment out of it. 

"We have a dozen more bottles of that exact vintage in our cellar," Captain Devereux said proudly, thickly buttering another piece of bread and sprinkling it with salt. One thing this close personal acquaintance with the ruling set was giving Rick, and that was vicarious indigestion. Compared to these people, the wretched refuse back at the Café Américain pretty much lived on liquor and smoke.

"Gee," he said in return, wide-eyed and deadpan. When Louis shot a narrow look at him, he lifted his glass in a silent salute and drank deeply. He wasn't a man for vintages, and too much red wine gave him a headache no amount of bourbon could equal, but it was good, and it was free.

Mme. Devereux listened to another fusillade of murmured French from Louis and laughed, swatting happily at his shoulder, as she'd done periodically since dinner began. Louis was really in his element--flattering the prefect, flirting with the woman, admiring the food and wine like an epicure while still downing it like a trencherman. All probably just reflexes with him. Rick marveled. It was always absorbing to watch someone doing what he was made for.

Next time Louis sent a raised brow down his way, though, he made sure to be absorbed in his drinking. Showoff.

"...perhaps you heard?" Captain Devereux was saying as Rick tuned back in. "A tragedy for his men, losing such a fine leader. And the second-in-command, too. What is it called, in English--" he turned to Rick, jovially, "--one fall swoop?"

Rick let that go on by, nodding like he was interested. 

The Captain sighed and turned back toward Louis, who was obviously the real target of his little story. "The post is in an uproar. Like an anthill, kicked over."

"The poor boys," Madame chimed in, putting an emphatic hand on Louis' arm. "They don't know what to do with themselves."

Louis made suitably sympathetic noises. Rick thought about whether he could reach the bottle of wine for a quick refill without his sleeve catching fire from the candles. 

"I know you have important people to see, Captain Renault," said Devereux courteously. "I know the journey to Tunis is long."

"Never so long that it can't be broken to make such good new friends," Louis said, smiling. They all toasted each other. Rick took the opportunity to slide the bottle closer and pour out the last of it.

"But," Devereux continued earnestly, leaning in, "do you think you might want--perhaps you would have time--"

Louis mirrored his posture, attentive and waiting.

"--to consider taking the position yourself?"

Now this, Rick hadn't expected to hear. Who else would get interrupted mid-secret-defection with a job offer? He looked over at Louis, ready to exchange a little silent surprise, and saw something strange: Louis was at a loss. An honest to God loss. 

Just for a second, luckily, and no one else seemed to notice, but Rick could tell. Something about Louis had wavered--his posture, his expression, the grace of his hands, the confidence of his bearing--though Rick couldn't pinpoint it even as it passed and was gone. This from a man who had stepped toward Rick's pistol without flinching, leaning into Rick's warning hand pressed to his chest.

Well, whatever the hell had happened, Louis was over it now, waving away the idea with self-deprecating charm. Devereux and Madame cooed and coaxed, and he resisted without entirely refusing, much to their transparent delight. While they enjoyed themselves in their odd little ménage, Rick studied the reflections of candlelight in the last drops of wine at the bottom of his glass. He was tired. And he knew it only got worse from here.

* * *

The candles had burned entirely down by the time they were shown their rooms. Left alone at last, free from relentless hospitality, Rick strolled out across the dark courtyard for a little peace and quiet. He smoked slowly, meditatively, leaning against a gatepost and watching the moon rise.

Before long he heard the crunch of footsteps on the pebbled path, and Louis joined him. He stood at Rick's shoulder, his attention lost somewhere in the middle distance. There was a glint and shine between his hands as he turned his cigarette case over and over.

"Light?" Rick finally asked.

"Hm?" Louis glanced at him. "Oh. Yes." He bent to Rick's lighter, sucked in a gentle mouthful of smoke, tipped his chin up and sent a thick, curling cloud into the still night air. That seemed to be enough conversation for him. But the little flame had shown Rick something interesting. 

"There's lipstick on your cheek," he said, and examined the glowing tip of his own cigarette thoughtfully, like a connoisseur.

Louis sighed--and didn't smirk, which was interesting in itself. "She was wishing me _bonsoir_. We do that sort of thing, even out here in the godforsaken end of nowhere."

"They sure do like you." 

He tsked impatiently and drew a pristine handkerchief from his pocket. "That is my job."

Rick placidly watched him take care of the evidence. "For a while there I thought they were going to start hand-feeding you. Peel you some grapes."

But that didn't get a rise out of him. Louis just tucked his cigarette in his mouth and folded the handkerchief back into a neat little square.

"So, are you gonna take it?" Rick asked.

Okay, that got him. He took the cigarette out and regarded Rick sharply. "Take what?"

"The job. The post. They seem pretty desperate for an experienced replacement, and you have to admit, you come highly recommended."

"Rick--"

"Vichy-wise. And you know how to butter up the Nazis. You'd fit right in."

"I have greater concerns on my mind than Nazis. Buttered or otherwise." Louis fell stubbornly silent and smoked a little more, the way he always did--not drawing a deep breath in, but with soft, elegant puffs, just rolling the smoke in his mouth and letting it go. 

Rick let him have his brown study for a few minutes. Finally, though, he figured he should take the guy off the hook once and for all. "It's a good idea." He said it, and he meant it. And he had no idea why Louis was looking increasingly angry.

"Perhaps. But not for me."

"Just what are you trying to prove?" He shoved his hands in his pockets and glanced around them for neighbors, keeping his voice low. "Don't you think a high-ranking Vichy mole is worth anything? They love you around here. You'd have them twisted around your little finger so fast they wouldn't know what hit 'em." 

Louis just shook his head.

"Look, you've done your part. You don't owe me." Rick paused. "Well, except for the rest of the ten thousand, but I'll take cash."

The glowing ember of Louis' cigarette flicked in a forceful arc, shedding sparks as it hit the pebbles. "Madame has instructed the staff to lay breakfast at eight, which will allow us to catch our train." And with that, he was gone.

Rick leaned against the gatepost for a while longer, prisoner of the night-owl tendencies bred into a saloonkeeper's life. But soon enough he gave it up and went inside to try sleeping in wonderful Vichy luxury. He didn't seem able to lose his thoughts in the moon anymore.

* * *

Louis' bad mood was going strong all through the next leg of the trip. Of course he was always courteous--Rick was sure that courtesy ran in his blood, along with ice-water and a dash of good brandy--but there was a new distance there, and an impatience simmering just under the surface. Rick didn't take it personally. Hell, let him stew it out, whatever it was. God knew they both had enough to worry about. Though it was odd, it affecting him all at once, when Rick had never seen anything weigh him down like that back in Casablanca.

Back in Casablanca. That was probably it. Rick couldn't stay the same man he'd been back there, either; why expect Louis to be magically untouched? 

He followed Louis from train to train like a duckling (if ducklings had suitcases), just as he had before, and stretched out on increasingly shabby train seats, propping his feet up when there were no other passengers in the way to give him dirty looks. And he didn't mean to keep thinking about it, but it wasn't like there was much else inside his head that he could stand to face right now. Over and over, he would open his eyes from an uncomfortable nap to find Louis just looking away, his brows pulled down and dark like thunder. And he thought about how good he used to be at figuring Louis out.

On one long stretch between Algiers and the Philippeville junction, in a castoff French train car that had once been pretty good looking, judging from the woodwork, they ended up with a compartment to themselves for a few hours. Louis was sitting in the opposite corner, pretending to read a newspaper. Rick wondered if he could really stomach the Vichy news, or if he just skimmed it the way Rick did when he needed a laugh.

"Say, Louis," he said. 

The paper rustled.

"Your pals from the Algiers station looked pretty happy to see you."

"Don't sound so surprised." Louis turned the page.

Rick stretched out along the bench on his side of the compartment. "They were sad to see you go without staying overnight."

"Mm-hm."

Clasping his hands comfortably behind his head, Rick said idly, "Seems they'd love to see you commandant of that empty post." 

The edge of the paper lowered abruptly, and Louis eyed him. "So now he finally pays attention to all the chattering Frenchmen."

"Guy's gotta have a hobby." 

The paper lifted again, smooth and faceless. "Perhaps the fewer stops we make from now on, the better."

Rick thought this over. Empty compartment, no better time to dig a little-- "You have any problems getting away to meet me?"

"Of course not."

"No squawking from the Consul's office?" 

Louis sighed and folded the paper on his knee. He was drawn and tired, but his tie was still even, his cap at a perfect angle--a lesser man would've looked rumpled. "The Consul was more than happy to hear I would be leaving to personally explain the situation to a higher authority. If there is anything the official hierarchy of Casablanca appreciates, it's the opportunity to avoid any possibility of blame." A hint of the old smile showed up. "When I never arrive to make my report, and the long arm of the Gestapo descends upon Heinz's office...Well."

"Is that why you're not staying to take the new job? Things too messy back in the old one?"

The smile faded. "If you like."

"No, I'm not buying it. It'd be easy to pin Strasser's death on Laszlo--he has a bunch of Nazi death sentences already, one more wouldn't break the bank. Strasser was careless, he let Laszlo get the drop on him. Luckily, you were there to pick up the pieces." 

Louis was watching him warily, but said nothing.

"I bet the Germans would love to see you get promoted out of town," Rick continued, grinning. "They could slap martial law down on Casablanca, and some other post would get a crackerjack yes-man."

"Are you finished?" The hand on Louis' knee was clenching atop the paper, wrinkling its pristine folds.

Rick studied him, a little startled. "All right."

The newspaper was smoothed and put away, the window opened at the top for a breath of hot, sooty air, and their next set of passes and tickets readied and checked before Louis settled down again. He stared resolutely away from Rick and out at the passing countryside, his posture stiff and unyielding.

* * *

True to his word, Louis kept their stop in Tunis to a bare minimum. He made their excuses politely but rapidly to the crowd of official well-wishers who met them at the station, and towed Rick to a dumpy little train on a single-track siding. Some of the seats were torn and uneven, listing like drunks; some had been ripped out altogether. They wedged themselves in next to a window, sitting on their suitcases, and the train wheezed off for Gabés within the half-hour, leaving Tunis and its teeming streets behind. Rick would've asked what that was all about, but he knew he wouldn't get an answer. And this little train was as local as a train could get, squeezing more and more people aboard with every shuddering, lurching stop. So he just sat jammed against Louis' shoulder and swayed with the uneven straining of the engine, wondering who else on the train might be running for it, and who might be thinking about the grave, dapper police official and his silent friend (Arms dealer? Profiteer? Some kind of collaborator, _bien sûr_ , he has the look...). 

It was an eternity, the rest of that day and all of the night, packed on the Gabés local. He leaned out the window at one stop to buy puny oranges and at another to buy bread, and with the last of the light he read Louis' newspaper, but the rest of the time he slept on and off. He didn't dream, really, but his thoughts were thick, hazy, full of steaming heat, the clash and screech of metal wheels on metal tracks, the sickly wail of the whistle.

He woke a few times with his head fallen to Louis' shoulder. "Sorry," he said the first time, shifting his aching back. Louis only regarded him with a slanted look that reminded him of long, wandering chess games they'd had back at the café. Then another stop, and more passengers, and the moment was past.

The second time, he didn't apologize: he peeled one of the oranges and offered half to Louis, while Louis talked to him quietly about El Djem, the huge Roman amphitheater not far from the latest stop. The dark, ancient landscape was invisible outside the grimy windows, but Louis' stories did the job all right.

The third time, he didn't bother to wake all the way up. All he did was think, huh, shoulder again. He could feel the pressure of Louis' cheek against the top of his head, heavy with sleep. He shifted slightly to ease a developing crick in his neck, and dozed off. 

Waking in Gabés was like coming up from underwater. He staggered off the train after Louis before he was entirely conscious, nothing but sheer habit and good luck keeping the suitcases solidly in his grip. It was early, but the sun was high and hot, glaring right through the backs of his eyes. He clapped his hat on and squinted his eyes up to nearly nothing, but he could feel the headache starting. A train hangover, without even the pleasure of a drinking jag first. 

Louis was looking around the sparse little station platform with satisfaction. The single-track railway line actually ended here in a wide turnaround and a few deserted sidings--literally the end of the line. Rick wasn't really sure what Louis was so happy about, but he followed anyway. Might as well. The bags weren't going to carry themselves.

It wasn't far to their next destination: a long mud-brick building with a wooden "Palais de Justice" sign mounted over the door, its black paint touched with a peeling gold outline. Strips of wood were woven into a wide shade awning, leaning on two poles. 

"Maybe not quite the style you're used to," Rick said, bending to set the cases down. 

Louis regarded the tableau complacently. "They could use a decorator," he admitted. "But you mustn't judge everyone by the standards of my office. It wouldn't be very fair, would it?" He removed his cap, brushed dust from it with a flick of his sleeve, and donned it again before stepping up to the threshold. 

The door opened before he could touch it. Actually, it wasn't so much opened as it was flung wide, by a tall, thin man in a well-worn service uniform. "Renault!" he crowed, and broke into a torrent of rapid French--"I thought I heard your voice, you rascal! How are you, how are you!" He seized Louis by the shoulders and stooped to deliver two enthusiastic cheek-kisses. Louis returned them with composure.

"Very good to see you, Guiscard," he replied in English. "I hope this isn't a bad time."

Guiscard laughed, shaking Louis gently. "Every time is a bad time in Gabés, uh? You remember?" He spoke English now, heavily-accented but just as fast.

Louis' smile was wry, relaxed, as it hadn't been for miles. "I remember." 

"Come in! Come in out of the heat, and my beggar of a sergeant will get us some tea!" Guiscard waved one long arm into the depths of his office. His gaze shifted expectantly to Rick, waiting for an introduction.

Rick shook his head, trying for polite regret. "You gentlemen will excuse me. I'm sure you have a lot to talk about." He didn't want to get into introductions, he didn't want to make chit-chat. Not this close to the Sahara itself, this close to getting off the beaten track, away from the official and the curious and all things Vichy.

Guiscard looked like his curiosity was going to eat him alive, poor guy. But he just half-bowed in return, smiling, and let Louis draw him inside and close the door. Rick settled down on one of the benches under the dappled shade of the awning and loosened his collar. He couldn't sleep--the train hangover still had him tight by the temples--but a little time out of the sun was welcome.

The door of the prefect's office was thin; most of the actual words were muffled, but he could hear long, rapid bursts of speech from Guiscard, followed by Louis' voice, smooth and cadenced. Occasional laughter. Everything seemed to be going well. And the longer he just sat in the shade, his back braced against the wall, the more his head settled down.

A small squad of native troops marched by, rifles shouldered, followed by a more casual group of young French soldiers. A few of them were talking together, but one straggler noticed Rick and tipped his head. He was young, his hair cropped close under his kepi, a sunburn peeling the skin on his nose. Rick tossed him a crooked salute.

The kid lagged behind, letting the rest go on down the road and turn a corner before he wandered over. "Good morning," he said in French, polite and diffident as a schoolboy.

Rick could understand French just fine, but he was damned if he was going to give his train hangover a workout by having to talk in it. "Morning," he answered in English. 

The boy's eyes widened; he replied in slow, careful English, "How do you do?"

"I do just fine." Rick waved a hand at the neighboring bench. 

The boy smiled shyly and sat down, rifle slung around his chest. "It is...very hot," he said. "The day, it is very hot."

"It is," Rick answered gravely. Let him get his practice in, and why not. 

"You...Are you..." He paused, groping for words, and Rick suddenly dreaded the end of the question. The last thing they needed was to draw too much attention, even from some fresh-faced kid who looked like he just chipped his way out of the egg last week. He prepared a quick brushoff.

"...Are you...Ah, _do_ you, do you...have cigarettes?"

Rick blinked at him. Then he grinned and went for his pocket, holding out an open pack of American cigarettes. In Casablanca they were gold-standard currency; he could only imagine their value out here.

The boy reverently took one cigarette, and at Rick's urging took a couple more, tucking them away. He patted his own pockets and drew out a cigarillo, pressing it into Rick's hand. "Thank you," he said, pronouncing the words carefully. "Thank you." 

"You're welcome." Rick slipped the cigarillo into his inside pocket and offered his guest a light. They sat together quietly in the shade, the boy smoking, Rick's headache fading away. Curiosity seemed to be waiting politely at the border; at the moment, they were just two gents taking a break from a scorcher of a day, without a thought for where they came from or where they were going. Not that that could last forever.

It lasted longer than he'd expected, anyway. The kid had manners. It took him a long time to lose out against his native inquisitiveness. But finally, his cigarette smoked down to the tiniest scrap and the last ashes regretfully brushed from his leg, he smiled uncertainly at Rick.

"You wait for a train?"

Rick shrugged. He was prepared to shrug till Kingdom Come, if that's what it took. 

"The train...it stops here. It is the last. This place is the last, here." He was leaning forward earnestly, his expression speaking less of curiosity than it did of...worry? Was this little soldier actually trying to help a seedy, unshaven stranger loitering on a streetcorner? Granted, the loitering was happening on the police station porch, but still.

"No trains south. No...tracks in the Sahara."

Rick combined his next shrug with a reassuring nod, thinking okay, okay, kid, you can leave it. 

"We, my comrades, my officers, we go south. We have trucks. Big trucks."

Good God, he _was_ trying to help. He was offering A-1 taxi service down the rough military trails just this side of Italian territory. They could get to one of the Vichy forts down there and then slide along the south edge of the Italian-held desert, in the wastelands where the bureaucracy of the northern coast didn't reach. And south of the Italians were paths through the Tibesti mountains, blurring into Free French positions. This was never going to be as easy as hopping a fence, but a personal escort had seemed like a little too much to expect. 

It had almost been a vacation so far, for crying out loud. They'd been well-fed and well-hosted by the enemy. They'd made it to the end of the railway lines without a problem. As he settled in to talk to the kid about the big trucks going south, he couldn't help but wonder: when was the lightning gonna strike?

* * *

By the time Louis emerged from the prefect's office carrying two glasses of tea, Rick had accepted the kid's--Iven's--friendly offer, and cemented it with some more American cigarettes. Now he was listening to Iven practice a little more English by telling him about his mother, his sister, his aunts, his cat and her kittens back in France. 

The kid looked up at the sound of Louis' step, a half-smile of concentration still on his face. But when he noticed the uniform, rank and medals and all, he jumped to his feet like he'd been stuck with a pin. His salute hung quivering at the brim of his cap.

Louis handed Rick one of the glasses and saluted gently. Before he could turn his inquiring look into a question, Rick said, "Iven's offered us seats in one of the trucks heading down to Fort Polignac. He hopes this afternoon will be a convenient time for departure." 

And on the arching rise of Louis' eyebrows, Rick took a long, satisfying drink.

* * *

The holiday mood kept up. Louis seemed to be enjoying himself, the dark mood of Oran and Algiers submerged, if not entirely left behind. He entered into the spirit of the thing, trading a few smokes of his own, helping the boys practice their wildly-varying amounts of English, basking in the obvious respect for his rank and position. Even more, whenever one of the trucks got bogged down in a trickier patch of sand than usual, he willingly climbed out with the rest of the troops and pitched in, grabbing steel mesh and woven mats from the back of the truck and packing them down by the wheels. Even when he was sleeping, the cries of " _ensable_!" put him into action every time. Rick usually stayed in the truck and marveled--Captain Louis Renault, digging with his hands like a common infantryman. If he only had a camera.

Day after day, pretty much the same thing, setting out in the afternoon and winding their way down along the desert trails all night; during the worst heat of the days they stopped to eat and rest, hopscotching from tiny encampments to native-manned outposts to French forts. At first Rick and Louis were treated like honored guests, and later on, like mascots. But by the time the convoy finally rolled into Fort Polignac, they were comrades, in on every joke and welcome in every card game. If anyone suspected that Louis cheated once in a while, they were too smart to say so.

"Say hello to Polignac!" Iven said, hopping down from the truck and beaming up at Rick. "Welcome to the backside of nowhere!" His English was improving every day, though Rick doubted Iven's mother would approve of some of the stuff he was learning.

The Commandant gave them a welcoming audience, too, returning Louis' handshake with a double-handed grip, eager to hear the news from Gabés. Louis' pocketful of bona fides from Captain Guiscard was working like nobody's business, and his personal charm got them invited to dinner with the officers before the trucks' engines had even cooled. Rick left him to the important work of greasing the VIPs, and followed an orderly off to the barracks. He'd thought maybe they'd be bunking in with the boys, kind of an extension of convoy life, but it looked like they'd been promoted; they had a room to themselves, and it turned out that Iven had personally stocked it with their suitcases, fresh basins of washing water, and a mirror with only a couple of cracks in it. Rick whistled low as he closed the door and surveyed the place, simultaneously feeling like a king and a bastard. He was used to it, though. He'd felt like that a lot, one way or another. He didn't let it keep him from a good shave.

* * *

" _Santé_!" 

"... _Salud_? _Prosit_?"

"We need another toast--"

" _À la bonne heure_! We shall have a contest--eh-- _skol_!"

"What does it mean, 'Here is mud in your eye?'" 

This dinner was a lot different from the one in Oran. Conversations in French, English, and a mixture of both spilled all around the table, the hearty, vigorous talk of military messmates. The food was plain, but good. After the soup course, the Commandant called the native cook out to receive the group's approval, and they shouted Bravo! like they were at the opera. And no one was flattering anyone into anything (as far as he could tell, and he'd developed a pretty good nose for that kind of thing). It was a simpler kind of cameraderie, and a familiar one. Not familiar from Casablanca--life there was too double-dealing and slippery to support anything simple--but from well before then, on the line with the guys in Spain. 

Yeah, that was almost how it felt, like being back in Spain again--fighting and hiding one minute, and the next getting drunk and hearing dirty stories in four languages (if you counted an impenetrable Scottish accent as the fourth one). And that thought gave the whole evening a shadow that Rick couldn't quite shake. What did these kids know about their Vichy bosses, anyway? Next time Rick ran into them, he'd be facing them down the barrel of some Free French machine gun. It was stupid to worry about having to kill them, since so many of them would be dead by the end of all this anyway. What did it matter who did it? Still, Rick couldn't help but hope it wouldn't have to be him. Soft, maybe. But he wasn't in this to kill French kids whose main crimes were being too obedient and believing what Marshal Pétain told them about armistice with honor. 

Anyway, as the evening went on, he made a point of not remembering their names. Just in case.

The one thing that did remind him of that Oran dinner was afterward, when his head was stuffed full of other people and talk and noise, and the group finally started looking at their watches and making jokes about the horrors of reveille. Once they had scattered to their various quarters, at last Rick could go outside and breathe a little air, idly watching the guards in the lookout towers silhouetted against a thick spread of stars. 

And just like before, he eventually heard familiar footsteps behind him. Louis still had a half-glass of brandy in his hand, and he stood at ease next to Rick and swirled it in a slow circle. They didn't smoke tonight. Rick figured maybe the high value of cigarettes for trade was finally sinking in, as they waited, poised, on the edge of no man's land and the last leg of their journey.

"It will be a long day tomorrow," Louis said after a while. He sipped at the brandy and handed the glass over. "We'll be leaving at dawn, or shortly before."

"You've been busy." Rick took a drink.

"Mm-hm. And the sooner we're on our way, the less likely anyone will care who we are or where we've gone."

"Yeah, the fugitive's code, I remember." He gave the glass back to Louis.

Louis gave an absent smile and finished off the brandy. "I expect you do." He turned and walked across toward their side of the barracks, and Rick fell in step behind him.

Nothing more was said until they were in their room, in their beds, and Rick was feeling like he would actually be able to catch some sleep. He might regret it, come dawn--sometimes sleeping just a little bit was worse than not sleeping at all--but he was willing to take the risk. And then, on the edge of dozing off, he heard Louis' voice from across the room, very softly.

"Thank you."

He opened his eyes to featureless darkness, and spent a few seconds wondering if Louis might be talking in his sleep. But he guessed not. So he answered: "For anything in particular?"

"Getting us onto the convoy. You did a good deed, Ricky." 

"Keeps my Boy Scout badges fresh."

It looked for a while like Louis wasn't going to continue. But maybe the dark loosened his tongue, because eventually he said, "Guiscard was eager to help us get to Polignac. But...perhaps a little too much so."

Rick frowned. "You think he was on to something?"

"No, no." Louis hesitated again. "He would have arranged our transportation himself. He'd been meaning to make a tour of some of the border posts, he said."

"So he wanted to come along."

"And he and I would have had time to catch up. Plenty of time." He let out a long breath. "He'd heard, so he said, of a new post going begging, up along the northern coast, not too far from Oran."

Rick grinned up at the ceiling. "Louis, you slay me. You're like a bachelor on the run from a bunch of matchmakers."

"Some men are just not meant for matrimony." 

"Maybe. But I don't get it. You and Vichy bureaucracy, it's a match made in heaven. You can't tell me you didn't even consider it."

The silence went on this time until Rick was sure he'd had the last word. But again Louis proved him wrong, speaking hesitantly. "I should have."

Rick thought about the prospect of crossing into the Tibesti alone, really didn't like it, squelched that train of thought, and answered. "There's still time."

"Not 'should have taken the job,'" Louis said, his voice sharp now. "Should have considered the job. Should have _wanted_ the job. But I didn't."

Louis lied when it suited him, sure. But Rick knew how most of his lies sounded, and this wasn't one of them. "You didn't. Why the hell not?"

"You don't want to know. Which, you are thinking, is a ridiculous thing for me to say, since the very act of saying it guarantees that you will want to know. To which I'll say, go to sleep."

Rick laughed quietly. "I guess that takes care of that."

"Good night, Ricky."

"You're really not going to tell me?"

"Let's not lose all the mystery in our relationship before the honeymoon is even over."

"Good night, Louis." And Rick turned onto his side and stuffed one hand comfortably under his pillow. His mind wandered vaguely around matchmakers, bachelors, weddings, and honeymoons before he finally fell all the way to sleep.

* * *

The pre-dawn hush brought Iven tiptoeing into their room to wake them. He was as neat and alert as if he'd been up for hours, a state Rick could only envy. But Rick managed to shave again without passing out face-first into the basin, so he figured he was ahead of the game.

When they emerged into the central yard, there were a couple of loaded camels kneeling there, groaning loudly at the world in general the way camels did. Rick raised his eyebrows at Louis.

"Meet Abelard and Eloise," Louis said complacently. "Or perhaps they're both Eloises, I don't really know. I promised the Commandant we would deliver them up to Fort Flatters, before we head back to Gabés to give our report to Captain Guiscard."

Rick just nodded, as if he heard colossal statements of fraud like that every day of the week. Casablanca had trained him pretty well in that kind of thing.

"Goodbye," Iven said from behind him. "Goodbye and good luck."

He turned around. The kid was holding a little package with writing on it. "You can... _can_ you, take this with you to Fort Flatters? I have a friend there."

Rick hesitated, and seeing no way around it, took the package. "Sure thing." He slapped Iven on the shoulder. " _Bonne chance_ , huh?"

Their suitcases were strapped on, they got a leg up onto Eloise and whoever, and off they rode. Just a quarter-mile away, along a well-worn section of the path, Rick accidentally dropped Iven's package overboard. The next patrol would find it.

Camel-theft was one thing.

* * *

They rode single-file, Louis in the lead, and just as the sun was easing itself fully above the horizon, Louis checked a map he held and urged his camel off the main path, down a narrow, twisting lane between two rock formations. So they were off southeast, finally making an obvious break for it. There was something refreshing about running so openly. Rick couldn't remember the last time he hadn't had to put on the face of a refugee to get out of one place and into another, keeping his head down and his thoughts to himself, traveling on the good will and sufferance of the conquerors in charge. Now they weren't refugees; they were plain old defectors, thieves, and liars, and that suited him just fine.

What didn't suit him fine, it turned out, was the solitude. Being a refugee meant you were constantly surrounded by the enemy. You had a lot to keep you busy, what with dodging passport checks and finding places to sleep where you wouldn't be rounded up and sent off to a camp. But now, after the first few hours of getting used to the novelty of camelback, Rick's thoughts at last stretched out before him in a flat, merciless eternity.

Their first stop had really started the worst of it brewing. They'd paused after an hour or so and badgered the camels into kneeling for a few minutes, so they could open their suitcases--the rising desert sun wasn't doing them any favors. Louis expertly pinned some cloth to his cap, arranging it around his head and face, while Rick rummaged down into the bottom layers of his case, racking his brain for something to use. And underneath the layers he hadn't needed to excavate yet, he found some things he hadn't noticed before.

For instance: a beat-up little wooden box that unfolded to form a small chessboard, with the pieces stowed neatly inside. Rick had carried it around with him in Spain and kept it on the table in his Paris room, but he'd put it away after he got to Casablanca and got the full-size set.

And for another instance: a French kepi with a long white headcloth sewn to it, remnant of a hasty disguise Rick had once had to wear to get on the ship out of Marseilles, Sam following along behind as his faithful native bearer.

Sam. God damn him. That son of a bitch, Sam, with his 'Just leave it to me' and 'Go check your office.' Thinking five steps ahead as always, packing things Rick hadn't even realized he was going to need. Still taking care of him from a thousand miles away.

Back up onto Eloise. Or Abelard. Back into single-file behind Louis. And the rest of the day--a long, searing desert day--was nothing but solitude. Nothing to distract him. Just the sun, the dust, the gait of the camel making him sway back from the hips until the muscles along his thighs were cramping up. His thoughts emerged from the dark where he'd stuffed them, and they battered against the inside of his head like blind buzzards. 

He had to face that he was never going to see Sam again. He tried to hang onto phrases like might not and maybe, but they didn't last more than three hours. He was never going to see him again. Never going to see any of them again, his professor-turned-headwaiter fleeing the roundup for the camps, his emotional Russian bartender haunted by a faraway famine, everyone who had counted on him and backed him up and trusted him without any questions. 

And Ilsa. He tried hardest to keep that thought down, but in hour six, his hip and thigh muscles as sore as his dry throat, he finally lost his grip on it. He was never going to see Ilsa again. Never, which meant not ever, not in an eternity, not on purpose or by chance. Ilsa, off to America and please God keep her safe there. 

Hour seven, the sun hammering directly down on the top of his head even through the kepi and headcloth, he had a drink of water.

It wasn't like he'd never pulled up stakes and left places before. It was just...by the time he'd left the regiment in Spain, most of his friends were dead, or shipped off home minus a leg or other interesting bits and pieces. He'd left friends behind in Paris, especially Henri, who'd been almost like a father to him--or at least like a crazy French uncle--but the whole time Sam had been there with him to ease the way. Someone who was there for Rick to lean on whether Rick could admit he wanted to or not.

He spent the next hour or two trying to hate Sam. He couldn't manage it, but he tried as hard as he possibly could. Part of what had made the escape from Paris easier was how much he'd let himself hate Ilsa, how much he'd been fooled into hating her. The rage and blame had chased him out of town like a cleansing blast of heat, scouring him clean of memory and regret. Most of the time. And from the charred remains of the old life, Sam had helped him get up and start over. He didn't really remember how to do that anymore. Not by himself.

At sunset, rather than lose the tenuous path, they halted for the night. Rick slid limply down from the saddle, his legs aching all the way down to his calves. Making a tiny fire with wood from the back of Louis' camel gave him something to do, some way to get his numb mind working again, however poorly. They fed and watered the camels with the Polignac supplies and then swallowed their own dinner from a dented can, sitting shoulder to shoulder in front of the fire. It flickered weakly, and clearly it wasn't going to last long. But it gave Rick a little bit of reassurance, somehow, and judging from the way Louis was gazing into the flames, it was working on him as well.

Eventually the camels stopped grumbling, the wood was down to dead ash, and they rolled up in blankets and lay back in warm hollows scooped from the sand. Rick stared up at the sky, keeping himself awake, wishing desperately for a drink. But even he wasn't stupid enough to crawl inside the bottle out here. It would kill him.

Would kill him. It was disturbing, how tempting that thought suddenly was. He dreaded tomorrow's ride more than he could remember dreading anything in his life. He couldn't survive another day inside his own thoughts with nothing to hang on to.

The stars circled overhead; the moon rose. And for the first time in hours, Rick spoke, his voice hoarse and loud in his ears. "Louis."

"Mmm?" came the answer, without much of a pause. So, he was still awake too. 

"Tell me why," Rick said.

"I'm afraid you'll have to be more specific."

"Why you didn't take the job. Why you didn't _want_ to take the job."

He half-expected another blithe Goodnight, Ricky. But maybe the darkness was working on them again, or just maybe Louis could hear the jagged emptiness barely strapped down underneath his words, because that wasn't what came back.

"I didn't want to take the job because, clearly, something is wrong with me. I wanted something else. Something quite mad, I have to say."

"Something."

"That's right." His voice was as quiet and thoughtful as Rick had ever known it. "I could have worked for the Free French anywhere. I could have stayed out of the sun, drunk wine, bedded pretty girls." 

Rick looked over at him, at his eyes, glittering in the dark.

"It appears," Louis sighed, "I would sooner follow _you_ into the bloody Sahara."

It was a simple enough statement, and Rick had somehow expected to hear it, but that didn't change the fact that it really was, for Louis, quite mad. 

"You don't sound too happy about it," Rick said at last.

"I think it only proves that I have finally lost my mind. And I don't mind telling you that this is an uncomfortable and inconvenient turn of events."

"I'm an uncomfortable and inconvenient guy."

Louis gave a throaty chuckle. "You are, at that." 

"And I kept pushing you to take the job."

"Uncomfortable. Inconvenient." The joking edge was fading again. "Reminding me that I no longer know myself. And isn't that the first imperative for any man?"

He was starting to sound hopeless. Lost, as lost as Rick himself was feeling. Know thyself. Now there was a job and a half.

"I'm sorry you went crazy," he said, trying to chase that tone out of Louis' voice.

"Are you?" It hadn't worked.

So he told the truth--a commodity in short supply in Casablanca, but not so scarce between them, not anymore. "No."

Louis regarded him silently. And then, still without a word, he reached across the distance between them and laid his hand on Rick's forearm. 

The gentleness of that touch nearly did him in. A swift thread of pain flared in his eyes, his forehead, threatening the kind of tears he only ever allowed himself when he was drunk. He held it together--barely--but his fingers clenched helplessly in the sand. 

He could tell Louis saw something--thought something, knew something--but what it was wasn't clear. If Rick could have gotten it all out at last, tied himself to that offered lifeline by putting words to his despair, he would have. And if camels had wings, they'd be in the Air Force.

Louis wasn't asking for anything, though. He was just there. Maybe he already knew. Maybe he didn't need to.

Rick sucked in a deep, uneasy breath, and let it out. He still couldn't trust his voice, but he could move, slowly curling his hand around Louis' arm, pulling him closer. He didn't really know what he was doing, but what did that matter? Know thyself was already out the window. All bets were off. 

He lowered his forehead to Louis' shoulder, and that was all right. Just like on the Gabés train, there weren't any apologies.

* * *

He woke, and dozed, and woke again, to the night's chill on his exposed skin and Louis' warm hand cupping the back of his neck. Louis was so still that he might have been sleeping. It had been so long since Rick had actually slept all night next to anybody--he'd forgotten how it felt, just to throw off the postures and cautions of the day and let everything go, with someone right there who was just as defenseless as you were. 

Kind of nerve-wracking, really, if you weren't used to it anymore.

He thought about Yvonne. He'd never spent the whole night at her place, and God knew he'd never welcomed her up to his. And that made him think about Louis and all his women. Had he slept next to them like he did now, breathing deeply, at peace, utterly relaxed? Wasn't he ever afraid one of them would get the bright idea of grabbing up a bedside alarm clock or something and braining him? That'd fix the whole visa cash-flow problem once and for all.

He laughed quietly against Louis' collarbone. And Louis said, "Is this something I should take personally?"

Rick wondered about the best way to explain picturing someone's retroactive murder. Finally he just shook his head, too drowsy and inexplicably content to bother. "You should catch a little sleep."

"I might say the same thing about you."

"You're the one reading the map. I just let Eloise tag along after you and hope you know what the hell you're doing."

"Trust," Louis said sententiously, "has led many a man to ruin." His thumb stroked the back of Rick's neck slowly, along the hairline, raising a shiver.

"I'm in the middle of the Sahara desert, in a war zone, with a dead Nazi behind me and a stolen camel in front of me. I'm not sure how much more ruined I'm supposed to get."

Louis chuckled. "You're very pragmatic."

"Some people would say opportunistic." He closed his eyes. The stroking hand felt good. All of it did. Strange, but good, and out here in the dark the strange didn't so much matter. It had been a long time since he'd let anyone comfort him.

"If they wanted to waste syllables," Louis said, untroubled. "And if they didn't understand."

But Louis understood. And Rick did his best to give that back in spades, to show him that he understood in turn. That if they were both lost, at least they were lost together.

* * *

A couple of weeks turned this strange, nomadic new life into something familiar. They followed the map; they made quick night visits to border oases for water and then veered back out into the wastes. Once they managed to outrun a distant group of camel-mounted Italian soldiers. At night, they dug a single hollow and tangled themselves up beneath the same blankets. And when they got out of the desert proper and up into the nooks and crannies of the Tibesti, Rick learned a few new things.

He learned about the surface waterholes, the _gueltas_ , bubbling up from the rock and spilling over between the pillars and crags. He learned how to predict when a camel was going to spit at you, until he managed to avoid it every time.

And for two days and nights, hidden under a rocky overhang, wrapped together in layers of blankets from head to foot, Louis murmured against his ear of the windstorms that were currently blasting their camp into dust. The winds were called _khamsin_ sometimes, and sometimes _ghibli_ , depending on where they blew. And in the past these storms were said to have blackened the sky for weeks, like an eclipse or an omen.

Rick learned he didn't really believe in omens.

* * *

Eventually they found a good spot to wait, hiding in the cliffs overlooking the major _piste_ through the mountains. It was well-traveled enough that a short wait, maybe only a few days, was bound to bring them a patrol. And then...Rick didn't really know. But Louis told him the Free French patrols rendezvoused down at Fort Lamy, and Fort Lamy had planes into Brazzaville, and Brazzaville had the headquarters of the whole shooting match. So it seemed like a good place to start.

The first gray hints of dawn woke him, as usual--that, and the irritable muttering of the camels. He rolled onto his back and folded one hand behind his head, yawning, watching Louis' silhouette draped across the lookout spot. Only the slightest movement of the binoculars betrayed his stillness. When Rick finally climbed up beside him, the gray light was turning warm and yellow; later it'd blast white-hot, but for now it felt good on his uncovered head.

"Good morning," Louis said. Rick peered over the edge into the pale distance, and Louis slipped the binoculars into his hand.

"Anything?" Rick focused and started scanning the terrain to the right, sweeping the same grid he did every day.

Louis stretched and made his way down. "Ten o'clock."

"Ten o'clock what." He paused absently and resettled his elbows.

"Try ten o'clock." Louis' voice was patient and amused, and getting farther away.

Rick glanced over his shoulder after Louis, briefly startled, then swept the binoculars across and up to hit the ten o'clock spot. There it was, a faraway cloud of dust--and not just any cloud of dust. This cloud had regular habits, creeping slowly and steadily along the widest of the mountain trails. He touched the focus delicately. Not camels--trucks. Or maybe jeeps. Whose jeeps, though, he couldn't yet say, and that was the big question.

He heard Louis fetching water and tending to the camels, but he didn't move a muscle except to track their distant visitors. The sun, on its relentless way upward, stung his forehead.

Eventually, he felt Louis climb up next to him again and press something against his hand. He glanced down. His kepi, more than disreputable by now, but still welcome.

"Thanks," he said, and passed the binoculars. He tugged the cap on and rubbed the strain from his eyes. "What've we got?"

Louis gazed off at ten o'clock for another minute or two. Then he nodded his head once, decisively. "I believe we're going to make some new friends today." He left the binoculars at Rick's elbow and started down from the lookout.

"You sound sure."

"I am."

Rick looked again, making out the vehicles this time: battered jeeps, and one covered truck. They were stopped by the largest _guelta_ at the major fork in the trail, probably taking on water. Tiny uniformed figures got to work.

He stared until his eyes watered. "Who can tell Vichy from Free French at this distance?"

"Ricky, I thought you had more faith in me." There was a soft splashing. "Can't you see how sloppy they are?"

"Sloppy!"

"Now, now. This isn't an etiquette lesson. Look again."

So he did, concentrating on the closest little figures. Familiar uniform silhouette--on some of them. But as he looked, he noticed the silhouettes varying, sometimes dramatically, from man to man. Headgear was a completely mixed bag. One or two of them had on strange, piecemeal outfits that almost reminded him of old stuff from the Great War.

"No standard equipment," he said, satisfied.

"The difference between an army with strong supply lines, and one without." Louis' voice was muffled for a moment. "Besides, no army needing to get along with the Germans would go out in public looking like that."

Rick checked them out once more and then slung the binoculars around his neck and climbed down. There, he was presented with the sight of Louis, kneeling contentedly on the ground in front of a cup full of water. Shaving.

"What are you doing?"

He drew the blade delicately down his wet cheek. "I shouldn't dignify that with a response. I might nick myself."

Rick crouched next to him. "Do we really have time for this kind of thing?"

"They're at least an hour away, given the terrain and the stop for water."

"And true beauty can't be rushed," Rick finished for him, deadpan. 

Louis' eyes met his, arch and good-humored. "Exactly."

He watched for a minute more, as Louis finished an exacting shave and washed his face with a damp handkerchief.

"Move over," Rick finally said, and took up the razor.

They cleaned up and changed, for all the world as if they were expecting important guests--which in a sense they were, but that didn't make it any less surreal. Louis was immaculate in a clean white dress uniform, buffing the leather of the Sam Browne belt with the cuff of one sleeve.

"Won't be easy to keep the dust off that," Rick said, shrugging into a fresh shirt.

"There are sacrifices I am prepared to make for the sake of a first impression." Louis lightly ran his cuff across his medals, his head bowed to gaze at them. Then, to Rick's surprise, he began to unfasten and remove them, handling them with great care.

"Uh--you were saying something about first impressions?"

Louis didn't answer until he had all the medals laid out in the palm of his hand. "Did you ever hear the story about General de Gaulle?" he asked, watching them, angling his hand so the gold caught the light.

"There are lots of stories." Rick was watching the medals too, almost despite himself. The two oldest ribbons and crests, a Croix de Guerre and a Legion d'Honneur, had always told him something about Louis, he supposed. Something about the Great War, and challenges faced with courage. Nothing they'd ever talked about. But like so many other things, it had been there under the surface between them just the same.

"In this one," Louis said, wrapping the medals in a clean handkerchief, "he'd just fled to England when it was finally clear which way the Vichy wind was blowing. One suitcase. Four shirts. And he took his medals off and put them away. Until France was restored, he said." He knelt and tenderly tucked the package deep into his kit.

When he looked up at Rick again, his face was cheerful, though the breast of his jacket seemed empty and forlorn. "So if a row of pinholes is the current fashion, who am I to argue?"

Rick reached out and gave him a hand up, and Louis dusted sand from his trouser leg. They regarded each other, almost smiling.

"Well?" Rick asked, challengingly. "How do I look?"

Louis eyed him carefully up and down, then gently fixed the crease of one lapel and tweaked the knot of his tie. "Like a whole new man."

Rick fought the urge to busy himself with the suitcases or something, and just looked right back at him. "Thanks," he said, meaning it. "You too."

Louis tipped his head in gallant acknowledgement. "And on that note, there is one more necessary task." He unbuttoned the top of his jacket and retrieved a small leather note-case from his inner pocket, sorting through it with deft fingers. When he'd finished, he held a stack of thinly-folded papers in his palm, much as he had the medals.

"Not much, are they?" Louis said. Out came his lighter, and flick went the flame. 

"Looks like identity papers."

Louis' smile was strange and far away. "Here lie the remnants of Louis Renault, Prefect of Police for Casablanca. Beloved of Vichy, which came in handy. Feared and hated by all the rest."

"Maybe not all the rest." Rick slipped his hands in his pockets.

The flame met the papers, and the remnants of Vichy's Renault fluttered to the ground and were swallowed into ashes. Then Louis turned on his heel and left them behind without a word.

* * *

They backtracked down the path side by side, each with a suitcase in one hand and a camel's lead-rope in the other.

"I've been thinking," Louis said, his step as jaunty as ever, just two fellows and their camels strolling down a Paris boulevard.

"Now he tells me."

"I'll need a _nom de guerre_ , of course. The more...influential of Vichy's puppets have a way of coming to a bad end among the Free French."

Rick sidestepped a jumble of loose rocks. "Seems to me there are plenty of bad ends to go around."

"A fair point. But why shouldn't I put mine off as long as possible?" 

They rounded a turn and emerged onto a plateau from which they would surely be visible to the soldiers in the distance. Rick wondered if a white flag would've been a good idea. But what the hell. And he was sure Louis wouldn't have approved of setting that kind of tone, anyway.

"So," he asked Louis as they headed into the home stretch together. "What'll they call you?"

"I'm pondering the first name 'Lewis,'" Louis said, stressing the Anglicized final S. "But it just sounds so...inelegant."

"I see your problem," Rick said dryly. "What about the last name?"

Louis smiled beatifically. "What do you think of 'Richards'?"

Rick grinned, shaking his head. He could get used to this.


End file.
